News

Startup of the Week: Abili

2018
Feb 12

Please meet Aurelijus Domeika, CEO at Abili. How to create and develop solutions for health improvement, Aurelijus reveals in this interview.

So what is Abili? How it does work?
Abili is a company which creates by itself and distributes of other companies’ ergonomic products and medical devices. We seek to provide for people better solutions for improvement of health. Our activities are based on a variety of biomechanical solutions, creating and testing of equipment. We create training and testing equipment for sport, rehabilitation, and health promotion. Most of the devices train person’s balance and movement coordination. In order to create high quality – products, we use modern technologies of human 3D measurement and analysis. Our suggestions and equipment are based on a variety of researchers due to ensure customer with the best choice of equipment, exercises and better technique of exercising.

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?
The products that we created or distributing are unique and patented. We invest a lot of time guiding the customers with the latest achievements of science to understand why our products are unique. However, main competitors are companies which provide traditional training equipment and ergonomic products.

(Photo from personal archive)

What were the reasons for coming up with this idea and launching this product?
The idea began since JSC “Abili” director dissertation. He created unstable rowing simulator which grew to the important training device for individuals with a prolonged sitting position at the workplace as a preventive device of lower back pain onset. Also, this training machine uses rowers for improvement of balance and movement accuracy.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?
Six years pasted since the idea and first prototype. It was hard to start and introduce to people why it is important to train balance. Main of our equipment and products train human balance. Not much people understand how much it is important to train balance, activate deep muscles, due to high influence of sports clubs and different understanding of the sport. However, step by step we spoke, collaborated and tame people. We inserted a lot of efforts and time, but it worked. For now, the main and top of our product is “Abili Balance Analyzer” for testing and training person’s balance.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?
Our target customers are health institutions, sport, and wellness centers. Mostly we distribute our devices and services in Lithuania, and at this moment not much abroad. However, we can see that foreigners much more understand the advantages of our services and products and we are getting started to distribute our devices abroad. A few countries already have our main device “Abili Balance Analyzer”.

What are main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?
As I mentioned previously, the main challenge was to introduce why it is important to train balance. Not much people understand it, due to high influence of sports clubs and different understanding of the sport. However, we spoke and they heard due to the increased number of people with back pain due to sitting and weakness of their spine muscles. Wellness and sports centers, also step by step interested in our services. From physical therapists who are using our products, we are getting positive feedback. The main overcoming was speaking, introducing, exhibitions and attractive design of our devices.

(Photo from personal archive)

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?
For company establishment, we won MITA competition “Scientific researches and experimental development results for commercial projects competition according to High technology development 2011 – 2013 program”.
Now our income comes from the sport, rehabilitation, wellness centers as well as the individuals directly.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?
JSC “Abili” was established by Aurelijus Domeika and Vytautas Grigas. Both of them are doctors of technology. Aurelijus works more in biomechanics field and Vytautas in mechanical engineering and computer modeling. Working in collaboration with IT, medicine, and sports specialists we are creating the best devices for wellness and health promotion.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?
Our business is growing and products recognize and are very well known by athletes and physical therapists. The previous year we made sales of “Abili Balance Analyzer” to Germany, Russia, and Malta. We are expecting much more in this year.

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?
First of all we want to increase our sales in foreign markets with training and testing devices “Abili Balance Analyzer” and “REHABILI”. We already made a new design of “REHABILI”. Soon we will show it to our customers.
Moreover, our plans are to educate society for wellness and health promotion and to develop new products for health care.